An on-line newspaper, and the blogger’s generation, win the “Pulitzer” prize

It is useless to say it, but only some years ago on-line journalism was considered almost second rate, less prestigious than the printed sheet of paper. You have only to consider that, until 2008, on-line newspapers could not run for the “Pulitzer” prize. A few years ago things changed and in 2010 a written investigation for an on-line newspaper obtained a Pulitzer, it is the first time in the history.

Journalist Sheri Fink obtained the prize, after she carried out an investigation of 13,000 words about the complex and suspicious management of the sanitary emergency in New Orleans after the devastation caused by the hurricane Katrina: it seems that, during the emergency, a lot of doctors took hurried decisions about the life or death of patients. The investigation was published on ProPublica, a non-profit on-line newspaper, that shares its investigations with the most prestigious American newspapers.

ProPublica enjoys an enviable autonomy, it is able to disturb the powers without fear, for it is mainly financed by the yearly contribution of two American magnates (Herbert Sandler and Marion Sandler). Among the founder members there were such Pulitzer prize winners, as Charles Ornstein, Tracy Weber, Jeffe Gert and Marcus Stern, but this is the first time that a journalist of the heading is able to win exclusively thanks to the on-line.

However, the Pulitzer prizes of this year are a clear message of innovation. Among the winners there are also Mark Fiore, a cartoonist who publishes only on-line, and the Seattle Times, a local newspaper, that won thanks to the usage of Twitter, that is used in order to obtain notifications from readers. And here, from journalism, you go to another tool, that is called user-generated content, that is contents created by the readers of newspapers; the same contents that, in its small way, Varese News asks from its readers and for two years it has dedicated to them a fixed space in the home-page.

A work system that is decidedly new, that in Italy is hardly able to start apart from isolated experiments (for example the RAI’s one in these days). A way that is probably insidious and that must be faced with mutual respect. As these prizes show, it can bring great occasions.